Such a Lovely Face
by afewreelthoughts
Summary: Thomas's plans leave the Front are interrupted by a young lieutenant with a beautiful face. Taken from the prompt on dakinkmeme's tumblr: "Edward Courtenay and Thomas Barrow meet on the battlefield before Edward goes blind. Thomas saves Edward from blindness but he is the one who loses his sight instead."
1. Chapter 1

Thomas swore he would have done it. He'd thought about it for months, and his conversation with Matthew Crawley had steeled his resolve. If he'd been uninterrupted, he would have lifted his lighter above the trenches and won a hole in his hand and a home back at Downton. He wanted nothing more than to leave this place, and he would have gone through with it, he knew.

But he was interrupted. And his well-laid plans thrown to the fickle winds.

Thomas crouched, alone and shaking, in a corner of the trenches and had lit himself cigarette and decided that the time could not be more opportune when he heard footsteps.

"Evening, soldier."

When Thomas recognized an officer's insignia on the shoulders of the figure standing before him, he rose and saluted, "Good Evening, Lieutenant."

"Stealing a smoke on your time off, Corporal?" He had a lilting, upper-class accent, that made Thomas painfully aware of how rough his voice must sound.

"Is that against the rules, Lieutenant?"

"No, it's not…" the figure shifted his weight forwards and back, like a child before the window of a candy shop. "I was actually wondering if I might borrow a light?"

"Of course," Thomas handed over his lighter, and the lieutenant sat in the dirt. Thomas shifted uncomfortably. It seemed rude to sit next to an officer when there was no need, so he remained standing. The lieutenant crossed his legs and drew out a rain-stained, crisply-folded letter. He opened up the paper and lit the lighter. Thomas began a sincere prayer this man wouldn't use all his lighter fluid reading a letter from home, but at that moment the lieutenant tipped a corner of the paper into the small flame, and the fire illuminated his face. He was a young man, as Thomas had guessed, no older than Thomas himself. And he was beautiful: high cheekbones, clear fair eyes, and soft, curved lips. The beautiful lieutenant watched his letter burn until the flames licked his fingers and he dropped the paper at Thomas's feet to choke in the mud.

"Fuck you, Jack," his lilting voice muttered at the dying flames. The lieutenant stood and handed Thomas his lighter. Their fingers brushed.

"Much Obliged, Corporal."

"Barrow. Corporal Barrow." Thomas found himself hoping the young officer would offer his name in exchange. He didn't.

"Much Obliged, Corporal Barrow."

"Medical Corps, Ninth Division," he saluted. "In case you receive any other letters in need of burning."

The lieutenant returned his salute and tried to smile, but the motion of his lips died almost before it began.


	2. Chapter 2

Thomas knew that, as a medic, he wasn't supposed to have favorites, and he understood why.

Nevertheless, he took a special liking to some patients over others. These days they included Major Ernest Devereux. A young aristocrat losing his hair long before his time, Devereux lost the better part of his right leg three weeks ago. He was very plain and very pompous, but he laughed at Thomas's jokes, and Thomas liked him. Most of the time he spent in the hospital, Thomas found himself wondering what good he could do these men beyond patching up their skin and spitting them back into the world. But when he took the time to sit on the end of Ernest's bed, cracking jokes about their high command and reading him old newspapers from home, he felt like he made a difference. Ernest often said Thomas had more clever things to say about the world than all his wealthy friends back in London. To which Thomas would say that he'd like to meet these friends. Ernest would say he didn't: they were horrid. Thomas would reply that he liked any man with enough money, and Ernest would grin.

Thomas was folding up the grimy paper on an afternoon full of smoke and the sounds of distant bombs, when Ernest ground his teeth in pain.

"All right, sir?"

"God, Celia, you'd think it would be a blessing to be alive!" he moaned.

Infections came and went on Ernest's stump, and this one had been brewing for days in defiance of all the soap and alcohol in the hospital. Ernest reached out and grasped Thomas's hand, fingernails gouging his palm.

When the pain had passed and he let go of Thomas's hand, Thomas asked, "Who's Celia?"

"My wife."

"You never mentioned her name."

"I've found that men who talk a great deal about their families generally don't return to them."

"Do you miss her?" Ernest nodded. Thomas shifted on the end of his bed.

"May I ask you something personal, Major?"

"Please," he grunted.

"How do you tell someone you fancy… that you fancy them?"

Thomas had seen Lieutenant Courtenay twice since watching him burn the letter from Jack - whoever he was - but they had not spoken. The first time Thomas had been busy pushing past a group of soldiers, while bearing another on a stretcher. The second time he came across Courtenay and another young officer leaning in the open doorway of what must have been their dugout.

Thomas had halted, determined to come up with something clever to say before approaching them.

"What do you mean, you don't smoke, Eddie?"

"I don't like it."

"I once said I could never trust a man who can't go through a pack a week, at least." The other man let smoke drift from his mouth.

Edward laughed, an uneven, shaky noise. "Then you can't trust me, Harry."

"Course I can," said the man called Harry.

"You, no can't," Edward said, his voice still shaking. "I think the oddest things late at night."

"Like what?" Harry said, teeth gripping his cigarette.

Thomas tried to imagine the look on Edward's lovely face during that silence. He breathed heavily, and eventually settled on the words, "I think about how beautiful the gas clouds look at night and… and about how useless most of the classes we took back at Oxford are now," but they sounded hollow to Thomas's ears.

"You are a silly chap," Harry said and handed Edward his cigarette. "Give this a few drags, it'll clear your mind. I'm off to bed."

Thomas had stayed in the shadows for a long time, watching Edward watch the cigarette burn to ash in his hand.

If Thomas were to stay here any longer, he needed a dream to keep him going. It comforted him to pretend he could talk to Edward Courtenay again one day, to pretend that talk could be of love. Good god, it felt good to pretend.

"Come again?" Ernest said.

"How do you tell someone you fancy that you fancy them?"

"Oh, Thomas, you and me sitting her together almost every day," he sighed, "and here's me thinking you'd say nothing of it." Ernest gave Thomas a wicked grin.

"I don't fancy you," Thomas said firmly.

Ernest pouted, clearly pleased with his joke. "Well, don't do French girls. I haven't done any, but that's what I've heard."

"I'm serious, sir. If there's… someone back home I'm mad about… how should I say it?"

Ernest shifted again, and yanked at the covers. "God, Barrow! I don't know. You've never had a sweetheart before?"

"I have, but… this one I admire from afar. It's hard to speak when I look at her. She's… she's stunning."

"If you want my advice…"

"I do."

"Admire her, and leave it at that. Nobody can get hurt that way."

"What made you such a cynic?"

At that very moment, the first bomb hit. Still nowhere near the hospital, but nearer by far. Ernest shut his eyes against the noise. Thomas's bones rattled.

"Barrow!" called Captain White. "Sending stretcher bearers to the Front.

You're needed." When Thomas stood, Ernest grabbed hold of his hand.

"I've got to go, Major Devereux. Got to go now." Ernest shook his head. "I don't got no choice."

"Barrow!" the voice yelled again.

"I'll come back for you, I promise," Thomas said as he wrenched his hand from Ernest's desperate grasp.

But of course he didn't.


	3. Chapter 3

Thomas stepped off the motorbus when it stopped in the village of Downton. The gravel crunched beneath his feet.

"Everything alright, Corporal?" the driver called down to him. "Are you where you need to be?"

"Yes," Thomas nodded. The air on his face was cool, refreshing. He knew this place. He could find his way to Downton Abbey blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back, he knew. But when the motorbus pulled away, spraying rock and dust at his heels, he began to panic.

The path to the house should be slightly to his right, but there were trees and benches in his way, and the road twisted and turned. Finding it alone would be a needle in a haystack, and before he found it, he'd likely crash into trees, walls, and stray children. Not the image of the dignified soldier he'd hoped the staff at the house would see in him. He could make a fool of himself, or he could ask for help.

Never before had Thomas asked for help. Not of anyone. His first month at Downton, Sarah O'Brien had seen him floundering over a stain on his uniform. She had calmly fixed it, all the while insulting him for his carelessness. He'd insulted her right back, for being a meddling old woman and not very nice to look at. When they ran out of insults for each other, they started on Carson, Mrs. Hughes, and the upstairs folk, and they soon realized there was no end to the fun they could have at others' expense. They had been inseparable ever since.

Thomas could hear the crunch of gravel all around him and the voices of men, women, and children, but he did not know who was near enough to ask for help. Judging by their voices, no one was close to him at all. Well wasn't he the last thing they wanted to see: a helpless wounded soldier standing still as a monument in the town square. If he started yelling out to passers-by, they might run from him. He didn't know how long he stood there, waiting. Too long.

So he put his walking stick in front of him and started forward. When Thomas was a boy and lived up north, the winter nights were black and thick as pitch. He remembered waking in the middle of the night and walking forward with arms outstretched. In the blackness, every step was a mile, and Thomas would pretend he were a giant, crossing oceans and continents with each step. He wasn't blind and helpless – he was divine.

Thomas's shins collided with a wooden bench. "Fuck!" What was the stupid stick for if it didn't do its job?

"Can you see where you're going?" came a friendly voice, a man's voice, and it sounded old.

"What does it look like?" Thomas snapped. The old man stood up, scoffed, and his steps grew fainter and fainter. Thomas collapsed onto the bench and decided it would be best to stay there until old men learned some manners. He ground the end of his walking stick into the gravel, ran his hands up and down the smooth wood.

He needed to ask for help eventually, he reasoned. He was a young man in uniform. Someone would take pity on him. He shuddered at the thought. _Take pity._That was just what a man did when he took pity, but he took so much more than that: he took your dignity, humanity, even. He didn't want someone to take pity on him, no matter how he needed it. But what more could he expect? He leaned back against the bench, and closed his eyes. Colors still played before his useless eyes: blue and yellow and red and gold, never resolving into anything he could make sense of.

"Thomas?"

"Lady Sybil!" Thomas turned towards her voice and stood up. He straightened his back and lifted his chin, as though he were watching guard over the doors of Downton in black and white livery. "What brings you here, milady?"

"What brings you here?"

"I..." Thomas didn't realize his condition needed explaining. _A gas mask shoved on hastily, and too late_ would be the strictly honest answer to her question. "I was discharged."

"Of course," she murmured, her voice turning soft and strong, the way it did when she spoke to her closest friends. "I'm sorry I asked."

Thomas could have told her she did not need to apologize, but he knew it wasn't true, and if he knew Sybil at all, she knew it, too.

"Were you hoping to go to the house? I'm headed there myself."

"I have nowhere else to go," he said.

"You really don't?" Still that soft tone. She was standing so close Thomas could smell the lavender of her perfume.

He felt himself blush. He hadn't meant to say that aloud. No one needed to know that; it was his business and his alone, and he didn't want anyone's charity. So he lied. "There is family I could write to... and some old friends..." not many of those, if he were being perfectly honest. "...but I thought I could start here."

"I'm glad you did," Lady Sybil Crawley slid her arm through his and started walking slowly along the gravel path. Thomas stumbled on their first step, but she said nothing about it. "I'm glad Downton can be a place of happiness and refuge for someone," her voice sounded open and strained in a way he had never heard back when he worked at the house. It would be logical to ask if Downton were a place where she could be happy, but it seemed too intimate a question to ask his one-time employer's daughter as she walked him to the only place left he could call home.

When they reached the top of the gravel path and sunshine turned the dots in his vision brilliant , Lady Sybil squeezed his arm. "Wait here," she said and walked away. Thomas titled his face up to the sunshine. He could see the silhouette of the grand house against a blue, blue sky in his mind's eye. He never thought he'd ever miss the sight.

The sound of a bell in the distance, and then Mr. Carson's voice, "Yes, Lady Sybil?"

She had brought him to the front door. Of course she had. His heart swelled when she took his arm again. He was walking in the front door of Downton Abbey on the arm of Lord Grantham's youngest daughter. He memorized the sound of his feet crunching the gravel below, ringing on the wooden floors, then sinking gently into the rich carpets. "You wouldn't mind if I left you to find my father, would you, Thomas?" her voice echoed through the hall.

"Of course not." Lady Sybil's small, hard shoes crossed the space, ascend the stairs. Thomas could have cartwheeled and somersaulted, he was so giddy. Standing where many a lord had stood, and out of livery, he wanted to remember this small victory the rest of his days. He could have walked fearless through Nomansland, fueled on this feeling alone.

When he was certain she was gone, he let a satisfied smile creep over his face. "How are things these days, Mr. Carson?" his voice echoed on the carved wood and ancient stone.

"Excellent since you've left, Thomas," the butler said quietly enough to keep it between themselves.

"It's Corporal Barrow, now." He had not minded when Sybil used his Christian name, but when it was Carson, he felt as though he were the footman Thomas again, as though the events of the last two years had never transpired. The feeling pained and relieved him at the same time.

"Excuse me for coming to conclusions, but it seems to me you've been discharged, which means you are no longer in the British Army."

Thomas took deep breaths to keep from lashing out at the old man. He would have been happy to insult him in peace, but who knew how private they could be in this giant place? Besides, he had nothing to say to that.

"How is Mr. Bates?"

"I fail to see how the subject is any of your business, Thomas."

It wasn't, but he hated the thought of setting foot inside these walls with the haloed valet ready to pity him at a moment's notice.

The sounds of barking and nails on the wooden floorboards came an instant before Robert Crawley's booming voice. "You said you met whom in the village, Sybil?"

"A man who used to be in our employ. He needs our help."

Thomas had no sooner bristled at Lady Sybil's words _needs our help_ than he felt a wet nose poking at his knees. He put his cane on the ground and crouched to scratch Isis' ears. The dog nuzzled at his face and licked his chin. "How are you, old girl?" She barked once more, then pulled away as her owner's footsteps came to a stop.

"Thomas!" exclaimed Lord Grantham. He could only imagine the look of shock on the man's face. "What brings you to Downton?"

"I told you already, father," Sybil said.

"Of course, of course, Sybil. To be honest, Thomas, I never thought to see you again since you left for the war."

"I never thought I'd return to Downton again, sir."

There followed a long silence, and Thomas did nothing to stop it. Imagining the look on Lord Grantham's face, as on Carson's, filled him with pride. Too much pride, he knew, but god it felt good. Rendering speechless – if only for a moment – these self-satisfied old men who thought he'd only ever come to nothing. What had he come to, though, besides being wounded in the king's service? Was this the nothing they had always thought would become of him? To become an impotent houseguest dependent on their goodwill and charity? His face fell.

"May I ask how you came by... your condition?" Lord Grantham spoke carefully, as if he were uncertain if he were speaking outside the rules of propriety, a crime he usually condemned in others, but never committed himself.

"I was retrieving the wounded during a battle, sir," Thomas said, "when soldiers started calling out the warning for gas in our trench. There was an officer I knew..." How well had he known Courtenay? "...who was passed out cold in the trench next to me. I put my mask on him before I found one for myself. The doctors say I wouldn't have lived had I been a second slower."

"Really, Thomas?" Sybil's voice was full of awe.

"Yes, Lady Sybil."

"That's a very noble story, corporal," Carson grumbled.

"It's all true, Carson," Thomas said, though had neglected the reason why he did it: that the image of Lieutenant Courtenay's beautiful face shriveling under the gas turned his stomach and froze his heart. Better to let them think it was for God and Country.

"You don't believe him, Carson?" Robert Crawley asked. Thomas was glad to hear the butler's tone had not been lost on the lord of the manor.

"It's a fantastic story, sir," Carson said. "And a little hard to believe."

"Dozens of such stories take place every day on the front lines," Lord Grantham said, clapping Thomas on the shoulder. "Sybil tells me you need a place to stay while you contact friends and family, and we are only too happy to provide it. Carson, tell the footmen to prepare Thomas's old room."

The winding staircase to the servants' quarters filled Thomas with nausea. He pressed the end of his cane into the carpet to steady himself.

"Heavens no, father! He's not a servant here."

"You suggest he should stay upstairs with us?"

"Yes, I do." Sybil must have lifted her head and stuck her chin out in defiance. "They'd never let him in at the hospital," she said. "Clarkson is very strict: officers only."

"Clarkson doesn't make the rules, Sybil."

"He could be less pompous about them."

Thomas could hear Lord Grantham's shoes pivoting away from his daughter. "Have the footmen prepare a guest room, then, Carson. Does that satisfy you, Sybil?"

"Yes. Thank you, father."

His footsteps took him away, and Carson and Isis followed. They would be headed towards the library, Thomas guessed, from the direction of their footsteps. Sybil took Thomas's arm again and headed towards the staircase. "It won't take long for William to prepare your room."

_William._He'd see Thomas helpless. The damn precious boy had more power than him, no matter what room he stayed in. Thomas had not considered that.

"I suppose you don't want to wait about downstairs for everyone to make a fuss," Sybil said.

"Thank you." Thomas did not begin to wonder how Lady Sybil had come by her extraordinary kindness, especially in a family such as hers. He only thanked his lucky stars.

"Do you know what happened to that officer, Thomas? The one you saved," Sybil asked as she led him up the stairs. It was a painfully slow endeavor. After a terrible fall down the hospital steps when he'd moved to fast, Thomas hated the activity.

"I don't know. I like to think he's home with some negligible injury, home and safe."

"What was his name?"

"Lieutenant Courtenay."

"I work at the hospital in the village now, to help with the war effort. If by chance he turns up there, I could..."

"Thank you for the thought, Lady Sybil. I doubt I will see him again."

But that's just what happened.


	4. Chapter 4

His first day living upstairs at Downton, Thomas Barrow felt like a king. On the third, he was bored. By the end of the week, he felt like a jailed man, and wanted to scream and scream and scream. True, he slept in a guest room and he ate at the grand table (an hour before the family did), but he was no guest. He was a barely-tolerated nuisance. The staff spread towels beneath his table setting to catch the sauce and soup he dripped at every meal. When he spilled broth on his lap and hissed in pain, William had been at his elbow, mopping up the mess.

"Don't you bloody touch me!" Thomas hissed at him.

"Sorry." The boy retreated.

It was William, too, who drew his bath. William who set out his clothes. Thomas wondered whether William had become Thomas's official valet.

A younger Thomas would have liked very much to knock the elder upside the head, he knew, and tell him to lord his new power over that miserable creature as much as he could. And Thomas thought about it. Every day he thought about it. But he had no power to lord over anyone. And he hated it.

Every day Thomas listed every family member and acquaintance he could remember to Lord Grantham, for him to write to. When he ran out of family, he started listing names of his comrades in arms, anyone who might have a good memory of him.

The brightest moment of every day was when O'Brien snuck away from work to sit with him in his empty, empty room.

"Blimey, Thomas, you got it made." She sank onto the edge of the plush bed beside him. He had to admit he ought to be getting the best sleep of his life. "Carson's head almost exploded when he heard you were to eat meals in the dining room."

They talked and gossiped and pretended everything was the same, but every day, far too soon, he felt her rise from the bed beside him. Every day he begged her to stay.

"I got a job, you know, Thomas?"

"Right you are, Miss. O'Brien. You do your job, and I'll be here." Waiting.

The loneliness of it all was maddening.

Thomas tried to entertain himself, but everything there was to do at Downton required the use of eyes. A library full of books to read. Acres and acres of land to admire. So Thomas spent his free time memorizing/memorized the house, measuring every hallway, room, and gallery with his paces. He was shocked at how alien the place felt without the aid of his sight and how often, even with the help of his cane, he collided into walls, doorways, and once, a valuable Ming vase. He had caught it before it crashed to the ground. Thomas thought he knew Downton Abbey inside and out, every nook and cranny from his time working there before the war.

Stairs gave him the worst trouble of all. Balancing was not that difficult, but he always worried he would slip just enough and crash painfully to the main floor. One morning he was practicing walking up and down the main staircase, slowly, surely, when a flurry of footsteps and petticoats descended towards him. He gripped the wooden rail hard.

"Good morning, Thomas!"

"My apologies for blocking your way, Lady Sybil."

"It's no trouble," she said, footsteps and voice moving away at a dizzying pace.

"Are you off to work?" he called after her.

"Yes, and I'm late."

She descended half the stairs, and he leaned against the balustrade. "Could I come with you?"

"What?" She stopped.

"I won't be trouble. Maybe I'll make some of the poor fools feel better, because no matter what's botherin' them, they've got workin' eyes."

Thomas could almost feel her staring. He wasn't used to begging, and she had never seen him do it, he was sure.

"Please let me come with you. It's madness staying alone in this big house."

And so she let him.

The hospital was filled with the light sounds of voices and other human noises, like Thomas's memories of the hospitals in France. Thomas found the sounds comforting, though he refused to dwell on why that may be.

"Who's this with you, Lady Sybil?" Dr. Clarkson said. Thomas noticed for the first time how his voice lilted, an almost whimsical sound.

"You remember Thomas, Doctor Clarkson?" Lady Sybil said.

"This is Thomas?" Thomas heard the creaking of floorboards, as Dr. Clarkson's voice approached them.

"I asked her to bring me, Dr. Clarkson, sir. I didn't want to spend another day alone," Thomas said.

"I suppose I'll allow it," he said.

"You'll sit over here, is that all right?" Sybil said, leading Thomas across the long, long room. He measured it carefully with his strides, resisting the urge to swing his cane.

"There's an open chair next to our newest arrivals." Thomas heard the scrape of a chair against the grimy wood floor. He reached out and let Sybil guide his hand.

"I need to leave you here, Thomas."

"Of course," he said. When Sybil's stride melted into the noise of the room, he heard a groan from next to him.

"You alright over there?" Thomas asked.

"No, I'm not bloody all right," the gentleman snapped. Thomas thought he recognized the voice. His heart bounced off of his ribs. The voice lined up with images in Thomas's head, the burning letter, the cigarette fading to ash in Edward's hand, and his lovely, lovely face.

"What's the problem?" Thomas said.

"Are you a doctor?" the Edward Courtenay asked him.

"I used to be a medic in the war, and I was a right good one... not much use now, but I can talk to you, if you like."

"Are you a guest of Nurse Sybil?"

"Yes, I am. I used to work at the big house."

"What did you do for work?"

"I was a footman," Thomas said, wondering if Courtenay thought less or more of him for it.

"You were a footman and became a medic in the war, and now… you're blind?"

"Yes."

"It's a bit of an odd story."

"Believe me, no one knows that more than I do," Thomas said.

Edward grew quiet and lay back against his cot. The springs creaked. "I took a piece of shrapnel to the leg.They got out most of it in France, but they wanted to bring me home for the major surgery. Either they'll succeed, and I'll be shipped back to battle or there goes my dance card for the rest of my life." The bed creaked again. "To be honest," Edward whispered, and Thomas leaned closer to him. "I don't know if I should hope for them to bungle it or not. He pulled away. "That was… Sorry, I want to pull through and go back to the Front. I'm very tired, and the pain is distracting."

"It's not cowardly to want out of a bad war, sir," Thomas whispered.

"That's a kind thing to say," Edward said. "But of course I didn't mean what I said.

I'm very tired."

"Of course, sir."

"What's your name?"

"Corporal Barrow. We met in France. You're Lieutenant Courtenay."

"Corporal Barrow?"

"Thomas," Sybil said as her shoes came to a stop in front of his chair. "How are you and Lieutenant Courtenay getting on?"

"Well, thank you," Edward said.

When the sounds of her shoes disappeared into the crowd again, Edward whispered. "You saved my life."

"What?" Thomas said.

"They told me a man named Thomas Barrow saved my life." Too much time passed before he seemed to breathe again. "Was that you?"

"I think so, sir."

"How?"

What do you mean by 'how'?"

"How did you save my life? I don't want you taking credit for something you didn't do."

"You… um… there was a gas attack when and I saw you passed out in the trench, and you didn't have a mask on. So I took off my mask, and gave it to you. I found another for myself," Thomas said.

"But you didn't get it on soon enough and went blind because of it?"

"Well…" Thomas hesitated.

"Please don't lie to me," Edward said.

Thomas had nothing to say. His hands gripped his cane.

"You did a foolish thing. I could have been dead or dying."

"I knew you weren't."

"You couldn't have known such a thing."

Edward shifted on his bed, and if Thomas had any sense of things, he knew had turned away.


End file.
